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Social Media – Is it my new local paper?

Do you still read newspapers? Is this a ‘dinosaur’ thing of the past now? Or you love the ink stained finger tips you get from turning the pages and enjoying your coffee at the table reading whats the news in today’s society? Really….who has time for this? I cant even remember when I last brought a magazine, let alone a newspaper.

I recently found out some saddened news through facebook, it was there right in front of me before it has made the news or the newspapers. By the time i saw it on Sunrise (morning news) it wasn’t the latest story to me. Just made me piece the puzzle together and ponder the news longer.

As a business, Social Media is a vital tool for your resources, its quick and easy to get your message across, but is it a vital tool for personal use? When will my Miss C be looking at me with her bountiful blue eyes asking for a facebook account? Lets bear in mind she will be 3 next month. She knows how to spell her name, knows her counting, alphabet, phone number, but yesterday she blew me away. The latest phase is to browse a store with mum and run her hands through the clothing, as if she is browsing the colours or something, goodness knows, she probably is counting the threads on the clothing as she knows more than i do at times. Then she loves to be involved in the counter transaction, yesterday we were purchasing in a sporting store, she must notice the clothing now that it is such a store, asked me if the pictures of the people on the wall were my exercising friends, WOW! How did you know what store this was? So observant! Then we stand near the register, (my husband doesn’t read my blogs right???) make the transaction, the lady asks for my email address to enter a draw, sure, as long as its not another store card. I start with the name, then i get to the ‘@’ and follow with bigpond and Miss C pipes up, .com.au ?????? I smiled and paused and suddenly thought, what is this? Now you know what an email address is? I continues to go over this the rest of the day, my email address, esp my personal one, is not something i am publicy saying anymore, lets face it, neither is your home phone number. So how does she know this?

It just made me think, this is her world right? Emails, Social Media, Blogging, will she miss the ‘old’ school newspapers and magazines? Will a magazine subscription for her be too dinosaur and ‘un cool’. This is the world we live in now, society rules the trends, the changes and the phases.

2 thoughts on “Social Media – Is it my new local paper?”

Every few weeks marketing and media guru’s publish an article on the ‘Death of Print’.
And they’re right…sort of.
Social media has successfully replaced any ‘low value’ content and smashed the information control cycle . Anything easy to diggest or which requires little analysis can be easily communicated by anyone, from anywhere and can skip the corporate news cycle.
However with this comes an huge increase in inaccuraies, both accidental and with the purpose of misleading.

So for next generations learning how to filter will be so much more critical to finding the facts amongst everything else.

Interestingly though, on the subject of ‘cool’. Artisan print is very cool and very collectable. The less common it becomes the more it appeals to the trendsetters again.
What print circulation numbers don’t reveal is the large number of high-quality independant print and magazines. Take a peak at Frankie or Dumbo Feather, to see two very viable print productions and actually making money.

There’s even now a sense of snobbery and class around high quality print. It’s like the difference between fast fashion and couture.
To get letter press invites hand set you need to book 2-3 months in advance.
The cool kids collect rare zines and limited editioned journals at $20-$75 each.
Wealthy parents from the old money set proudly display their childrens illustrated books like art pieces while scoffing at the tackiness of iPad apps and consumption of anything cheap or dispoable.

Print will survive on the back of the artisans, the collectors, those passionate creators and people who appreciate quality.

But, print as we’ve known it as a mainstream staple for news and entertainment is gone and there’s no doubt that a lot of kids will grow up with now idea what the printed word looks like.

Thanks for the response Mark. However you may have mis read my post. I was not ‘bagging’ out print, just purely relaying a recent experience. i do love Frankie and love the smell of newspapers and the black ink it leaves on my finger tips and the serenity it represents when i can sit down and scroll through it with piping hot coffee! 🙂